The present invention relates, in general, to a cooling station for disk-shaped substrates, in particular for substrates of optically readable data carriers, such as CD, CD-R, DVD, CD single, DVD single and the like.
Production of optically readable data carriers of the afore-stated type involves the use of an injection molding machine for making blanks from a plastic granulate, normally polycarbonate, which are processed in further steps until a finished CD, CD-R, DVD, etc. is received at the end of the production line. After leaving the injection molding machine, the blanks are still hot and must be cooled down to room temperature before further treatment. Typically, the temperature of the blanks at transfer from the injection molding machine and placement in the cooling station is about 100° C. When being removed from the cooling station, the blank should have a process temperature of about 22° C.
Conventional cooling stations, in which the blanks are transported by means of cooling spindles along a cooling section, include three cooling spindles which are arranged in symmetric relationship and have each a thread and a particular width of the thread groove.
These known cooling stations suffer shortcomings because the existent cooling station has to be modified or replaced with a cooling station suited for a new article, when the production changes, for example, from CD to DVD or from CD to single CD. This results in undesired shutdown periods of the production line.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved cooling station which obviates prior art shortcomings and which is equally applicable for substrates of optically readable data carriers with different substrate dimensions, i.e. without need for modifications.